Furniture Retail Wages Methodology

Dataset scope

The dataset measures gross wages and salaries per employee in full-time equivalent terms for furniture retail. The preferred retail perimeter is NACE Rev. 2 G4759, retail sale of furniture, lighting equipment and other household articles in specialised stores. Values are shown as monthly wage-per-FTE levels in local currency and in euro.

The measure is a wage and salary indicator. It is not employer total labour cost, household income, store revenue, retail margin, or company-level payroll. It should be read as a country-level retail wage benchmark for the furniture retail perimeter on an employee-FTE basis.

Source inputs

Annual levels are built from Eurostat Structural Business Statistics. Furnilytics divides wages and salaries by employees in full-time equivalent units, then divides the annual result by 12 to express the level as a monthly wage-per-FTE amount.

Short-term movement is taken from Eurostat's quarterly Labour Cost Index wage-and-salary component for retail trade. Where available, Eurostat's monthly retail trade wage index is used only to allocate each quarterly wage level across the three months of the quarter and to nowcast months after the latest quarterly wage observation. The monthly allocator is broader than furniture retail, but it remains wage-side information and is normalized so it does not override the quarterly wage level.

For Switzerland, direct Eurostat SBS G4759 wage-per-FTE coverage is not available. Furnilytics therefore uses the broader G475 household equipment retail wage-per-FTE anchor for Switzerland and applies Swiss Federal Statistical Office quarterly nominal wage development for the short-term path. This keeps Switzerland anchored to an official retail-sector wage level while marking it as a broader retail classification than the standard country rows.

How monthly values are built

Within a benchmark year, the annual SBS wage-per-FTE level is distributed across quarters using the quarterly wage movement source. Where monthly retail wage data are available, each quarterly value is split across the three months with the monthly retail wage profile. The monthly profile is normalized within each quarter, so the average of the three monthly values remains equal to the quarterly wage level. Where no monthly wage-profile data are available, the quarterly value is carried across the three months.

After the latest available annual SBS benchmark, the latest benchmark-year level is extended using the same short-term wage movement sources. If monthly retail wage data extend beyond the latest quarterly wage observation, those latest months are nowcast from the monthly wage movement until the next quarterly wage release becomes available. These recent values should be read as nowcast estimates until new annual SBS wage and FTE data become available.

Seasonal adjustment fields

The published value and value_eur fields remain the raw monthly wage-per-FTE estimates. They preserve wage-payment timing in the source path, including recurring annual patterns caused by bonus, holiday, or other intra-year wage payments where those are present in national wage statistics.

Furnilytics also publishes seasonally adjusted fields for analytical use. STL is applied separately to each country series and to the already calculated bottom-up EUROPE aggregate, using a 12-month seasonal period and robust fitting where at least 24 monthly observations are available. Stable calendar-month seasonal factors are then estimated from historical STL seasonal components, excluding the trailing endpoint window, and the seasonally_adjusted_value fields subtract those recurring seasonal factors from the raw wage series. Latest months that are only monthly nowcasts after the latest quarterly wage observation are held close to the recent adjusted level when endpoint seasonality would otherwise create a break. Euro-denominated adjusted fields are calculated first; local-currency adjusted fields use the same monthly exchange-rate treatment as the raw local-currency value.

Europe aggregate

The EUROPE row is calculated bottom-up from the country rows in the dataset. Furnilytics weights each country's wage-per-FTE value by its annual retail employee-FTE count. This makes the aggregate an employment-weighted regional wage measure rather than an unweighted average of countries.

The aggregate is published only when the available country rows cover enough country count and employee-FTE weight to support a regional reading. As additional European country rows are added, the same bottom-up weighting logic can be extended without changing the definition of the aggregate.

Currency conversion

Country rows preserve local currency where relevant and also include a euro value for comparison. Euro conversion uses monthly European Central Bank exchange rates. For countries that adopt the euro, Furnilytics applies the official fixed conversion rate around the changeover and uses euro as the local currency from the euro-adoption date onward.

Revisions and limitations

Official wage, employment, and labour-cost-index statistics can be revised after late responses, classification updates, survey improvements, rebasing, or national-method changes. Furnilytics incorporates source revisions during refreshes and may revise historical values to remain aligned with the latest official release.

The monthly rows should be interpreted as a wage-side temporal allocation of annual furniture retail wage levels. Monthly variation is strongest where monthly wage-profile data are available and should be read as timing and nowcast information rather than a direct monthly G4759 wage survey for every country. Seasonally adjusted fields reduce recurring monthly wage-payment seasonality, but they remain derived analytical fields and may revise when new months or source revisions are added.

Related methodology notes

Related pages